I’m not pregnant. Thank God. I was worried for a couple of weeks, though. I felt dizzy one day and my mother immediately leapt to conclusions. Then the PMT set in, but every PMT symptom can be interpreted as a pregnancy symptom and I was getting paranoid.
Phew! We’re just emerging from the two-babies-in-two-years fog and I am not sure I could have stood up, physically or mentally, to another one. My husband says he’d have left the country. Thankfully he can remain here and ferry up my tea and toast in the morning.
It was a close call, though, and enough to get me exercised when I read the patronising comments of Martin Daly, chairman of the Irish Medical Organisation’s GP Committee, last week. Dr Daly believes that the morning-after pill should not be distributed by pharmacies; prescribing it should remain the preserve of GPs.
Well, I bet Dr Daly never woke up on a Saturday morning wondering if he was pregnant and realising that he couldn’t get his hands on the solution to his problem until Monday morning, when it might be too late. Funny how those who never have to face a problem can confidently assure the rest of us that there isn’t one.
I’d had a close call on a Friday night and when I woke up I had a choice. Do I spend three weeks panicking or take a morning-after pill and eliminate the anxiety? Actually, I didn’t have a choice because my GP doesn’t open on a Saturday. He only opens on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday between 10am and 12.
It’s bad enough when you get into the surgery; it’s so humiliating. You have to give the “details” of the “incident”. You may have to explain to the receptionist why you must see the doctor that day and no other. So much for confidentiality.
Then the doctor gets to shake his patrician head at your silliness and gives you a contraception lecture. Possibly justifiable when I was 18 and drunk. Now I’m 35 and just tired. Give me the stupid pill and spare me the lecture. Oh, and here’s your €50 even though you haven’t had to do anything since I told you what was wrong with me and what I need.
There’s the rub. It’s a nice little earner: a steady queue of healthy women coming into your office requiring nothing other than your signature and your disapproval for which you get handsomely paid. Hardly surprising that Dr Daly doesn’t want to let go of that revenue stream. Naturally he’ll deny that finance is the source of his concern. It’s not just the money — it’s the control.
“We believe that the vast majority of women who seek it are in their late teens and early 20s and the opportunity should be taken to explain that emergency contraception is just that,” Daly said last week. “It’s a last resort.” He wants to talk to the women about “the implications of being sexually active and how to protect against sexually transmitted diseases”.
()Quite frankly he’s wrong — on all counts. Firstly, regardless of age, if a woman is responsible enough to look for the pill in the first place then I think it’s fair to assume that she is quite well aware of the “implications” of being sexually active. Secondly, there was a lot of fuss about a survey on Irish people’s sexual habits a fortnight ago. Most media headlined the highly predictable fact that young people are having lots of sex with lots of different people. Dr Daly might have found the section on contraception interesting: some 90% of the allegedly slutty teenagers he wants to talk to about “the implications of sexual activity” are using contraception.
Guess who is using the least? Married women aged 35-44. These are women sick of being dosed with artificial hormones and who believe that their fertility is low enough not to warrant using contraception. Perhaps they believe they have low fertility because they read headlines screeching about women who postpone child-bearing until their thirties when their fertility has dropped to disastrous levels.
The bottom line is that doctors won’t give up the morning-after pill because they want to give the safe-sex lecture. Well thanks, but I’ve had enough of the lectures. I am responsible for my own fertility and I’d like to be able to buy the pill in a chemist without the moralizing.
I see that the Irish Family Planning Association opened an emergency contraception clinic in Tallaght on Sunday. Guess who’s going to it? People from Carlow and Kildare. It makes no sense for people to travel these distances to get a pill they could just as easily get in their local chemist.
Levonelle, the brand name of the pill, has only been available in this country since June 2003. Prior to that the “morning-after pill” that doctors were lowering themselves to hand out was just a double dose of the normal pill, though they didn’t like you to know that.
“In the UK, the NHS has gone down the route of making it available over the counter for the past five years and it has made no difference,” Daly said. Difference to what? Pregnancy rates? Well, obviously, those who don’t think they need the pill are still going to get pregnant. For those who know they need it, why make it as difficult and expensive as possible to get? €50-€80 is a lot of money. Cheaper than being pregnant and cheaper than a flight to London for an abortion. But enough to put someone off, especially when they aren’t certain if the risk warrants the inconvenience, the mortification and the investment.
Daly again: “If there was a clear-cut advantage to making it available over the counter, I would consider it but so far there has been none.” Well, there is no clear-cut advantage to him obviously, but there would be to panic-stricken women.
Why not just dispense it in a pharmacy? Their opening hours are better and it would be cheaper. There could always be some deal whereby they tell your GP that you came in for it, and an obligation on them to give you a leaflet on non-emergency contraception.
Most disappointingly Mary Harney, the health minister, hasn’t the slightest intention of putting pressure on doctors to let go this control over women. “Clearly, it can only be done if it’s medically safe to do so and until we get the advice of the regulatory body that has responsibility in this area, I wouldn’t be in a position to make a decision,” she has said.
But it is medically safe. Safe as houses. It’s so safe that breast-feeding women can take it, and they aren’t allowed take an anti-histamine. This has nothing to do with safety. It’s just old-fashioned protectionism by the establishment to defend their income and their status.
